Sunday, April 30, 2017

Long Division: Second Closing

Today's matinee is the last performance of this remount of Long Division. It would be wonderful to have a second week of shows, but I am grateful to have had the opportunity to revisit the work at all. The play is definitely stronger as a result, the actors have made new discoveries in the text and with their characters, and the work--especially Lauchlin's set and Lesley's choreography--looks great in the Annex space. Immense thanks to Richard Wolfe for making all of this happen.

Later this evening, after our strike, the cast and crew will come over to our place to celebrate. In the meantime, I thought I would share a response to the play by my friend Ziyian Kwan. I have enjoyed writing about Ziyian's work in this space over the years and it is a treat for me to receive her sensitive response to my own creative efforts.

P

***************************Dear Peter,

Rodney and I attended Long Division last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I thought it
would be a fun exercise to do as you do and write about
the experience the morning after. And to limit the writing to within 500 words,
in a tone inspired by yours. Herewith:

On the day
I saw Long Division, playwright Peter
Dickinson’s partner Richard visited my husband’s bookshop, The Paperhound, to purchase
a precious pamphlet. Later that evening, upon arriving at the Annex Theatre, I ran
into David Kaye, an actor I haven’t seen for years, who lives in my building of
18 units. Then as I found my seat in the theatre, I realized that Jimmy Tait, whom
I hadn’t seen since attending a showing of Misunderstood,
was beside me. Hugs were exchanged.

All this to ask, what are the odds of running into people who are on the periphery
of our lives – in places where we share common interests, in remote
cities yet untraveled, or in our dreams? Are these collisions accident or fate? I think of
times when the course of my life was changed as a direct result of such chance
meetings.

Long Division invited me to consider the
gravity and levity of encounters with people. I found myself wishing to remember
exact lines that were pithy analogies of math and human exchange. The text, which was delivered by a fine cast of
actors, was recognizably Peter Dickinson’s: the sing-song syntax and dry
lyricism of precise words that captured potent questions about life. Throughout,
the clever use of phrases such as “in addition” to describe events.

Whereas much of the play was a silky cocoon of existential
inquiry, the story revealed a tragedy. This tension worked, yet I occasionally wished
for a less emphatic treatment of human drama. But then, I know nothing about theatre….

I do know a little about dance and found choreographer
Lesley Telford’s work bang on. Without being illustrative or literal, the actors
moved through space to navigate circumstances in time. The dance, though abstract, seemed natural, and
added texture to characters and scenes. And, the movement was styling!

I also liked the projection of mathematical formulas
on a backdrop of Pythagorean 3D triangles. Coming from dance, where projections
are often used but usually ignored, I appreciated that the actors actually
looked at the projections to confirm that, indeed, complex equations attend the
sum total of life’s many variables.

My favorite of the play’s many equations and
corresponding metaphors was this: the empty set is a subset of every set.

Like many people, I often feel like the outcast quality
in a mass quantity of digits that belong. But Long
Division helps me with this affliction, suggesting that the nothingness of
my empty set is part of a greater equation: humanity.

This morning I woke up and thought about my life as
an artist and realized that if nothing else, I have at my side and within me, the
exponential prowess of zero.

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About Me

I live in Vancouver and teach in both the English Department and the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. I am also the Director of SFU's Institute for Performance Studies. My academic interests include theatre, dance and performance studies, film studies, and gender studies. I am actively interested in the relationship between art and politics, and especially what the performing arts can teach us about our relationships with the places we live, and with the world more generally. Hence this blog.